Random Encounters

[This is a casual rp starter for scenes with Jen Daring, the world's most harmless Malkavian Antitribu. It serves as a warmup spot for character ideas for the After Gehenna game.]

San Francisco was a fishing village now. Bay water lapped the bases of the surviving skyscrapers, so clear now you could see down to the shattered street. Some brave divers went for artifacts down there: jewelry, surviving tools, random items to decorate their chambers with and claim bragging rights just for surviving. An old hubcap could cost you your life now that the Farrallones and the Bay were wed in one stretch of water over the drowned city. Sharks--the main risk in the area and also the main livelihood. They might get a fisherman now and again, but most nights in the high village with its precarious catwalks, it was they who became dinner.

When the sun went down the fishing crews lowered ropes down the side of the buildings and hauled up the boats along with their catch. The hard, ugly end-of-the-day work was necessary, for one breed of shark hunted at night and could take out even the few old yachts they had left.

The grunts and creaks of the ropes and thunk and scrape of the rising boats were the first thing Jen heard when she woke that night. She opened the closet she was curled up in and spilled out, yawning hugely. The outer wall of the hotel room she was squatting in had shattered outward, and a huge, battle-scarred gray cat crouched among the bricks, messily dining on a pigeon the size of a football. He looked up at her with his one good eye and meowed conversationally.

Within half an hour they had both eaten, and Jen was sitting quietly on the edge of the cracked rooftop plaza of the hotel. Other villagers, human and otherwise, milled on the rooftop by torchlight, enjoying a barbecue out in the cool night air. The cat sat next to her, keeping watch. Jen was a little unfocused, distracted by the blobs of golden and royal blue light dancing through the air. She knew something was going to happen soon and she should be here for it, but not what.

There's a lone man who lives, hermitlike, out in Muir Woods near San Fransisco. It used to be full of hikers, tourist trails and even a shuttle taking people up to see the redwoods. Of course, that was years ago.

He stays eight miles out from downtown San Fransisco, or what's left of it, in a little campground with a lovely view of the ocean. He hasn't really been in the area long... so far, he's had everything he needed. Tonight he's just come around to see if there was anything he could scavenge, maybe a bicycle that could power a generator. And a CD player. And some CDs. He misses recorded music, and he misses movies even more.

Eliot kept to the shadows as much as he could. He didn't think he'd been followed here but he didn't dare risk exposing himself. He didn't even know why his chantry had been attacked. But he was getting so hungry. And he felt lost with his sire dead even though he actually could hate him now.

He glanced up as someone walked into the alley he was in. He couldn't fight this anymore. He grabbed them and sank his teeth into their skin, managing to keep enough self control to avoid their neck.

She knew it was a stupid move, but the area of town she was in was dangerous and last time she had run messages there she had gotten into trouble with some kids that thought it was better to waste time picking on small girls. So once she had rounded the corner she had switched, where a dark haired girl had been was now a small fox.

With a small glance back, she made sure no one saw before she bolted off, after all she still had a message to deliver.

Two days after the affair with the sharks, things have come as close to back to normal in San Francisco as they do. The sun is just setting, throwing a few last glimmers of red light over the rooftop plaza that now serves as town square. The lights and the turbine have been retrieved, repaired or replaced; the rubble, seaweed and water have been cleared away, tables replaced, and with some effort, a pizza oven built from rubble, cob and fire brick.

The product it is cranking out is plain and uninspired by predisaster standards. Simple garlic basil and tomato sauce, little bits of cheese from one of the town's few cattle, veggies, chunks of barbecued pigeon. But it is food, and enough for all, and the people quietly come in to eat as one of the locals saws away at a fiddle for entertainment.

Jen stumbles out as soon as the light faded, yawning and stretching, and ambles around looking for anyone she knows. Her cat trots after her, keeping his one good eye on her so she doesn't wander into trouble.

Tucked away from all of the activity, a young girl was assembling some sort of device or other with a well-worn book laid out in front of her on a scarred rock the size of a small desk. She too was immensely distracted by her tinkering, pulling the loose scrap from a crate beside her scuffed boots and turning it over, examining it with goggled eyes despite the din of noise from the milling people around the plaza.

She was used to being alone anyways, it suited her fine for her inventions.